Family is triple threat in scouting

The day he turned 11, when he could officially join the Boy Scouts of America, Richard Dietrich found himself at Boreal Mountain Resort in Truckee participating in the local troop's Klondike Camp.

Lori Gilbert

The day he turned 11, when he could officially join the Boy Scouts of America, Richard Dietrich found himself at Boreal Mountain Resort in Truckee participating in the local troop's Klondike Camp.

While others built snow-shelters for the night - no doubt they'd been down this slope before, so to speak - Dietrich and a friend toughed out the night in a tent. They were awakened periodically as parents got up to remove the snow that collected on the roof and threatened to bring it down on the inhabitants.

"It was freezing," Dietrich remembered.

Despite the introduction, Dietrich, 18, warmed to the Boy Scouts, and last month became an Eagle Scout, the ultimate scouting achievement.

Only 5 percent of all Boy Scouts become Eagles. More than that, though, Dietrich's unique because he's the third of three brothers to ascend to the pinnacle of scouting. Before him, Joseph, now 24, and Thomas, 22, became Eagle Scouts.

"I wasn't pressured," Richard said. "If I didn't want to do it, I didn't have to do it. Everyone always looks up to their older brothers. I wanted to be cool like my brothers.

"Once they got their Eagle Scout, I wanted to follow in that tradition. It's so rare for one person to get it, but for all three sons to get it is pretty cool."

Rare indeed. The local troop has about 25 active members and Lincoln High School, where Richard is a senior, has only three Boy Scouts in the troop.

"(Other students) think it's lame," Richard said. "It's sad. You tell them you're in Boy Scouts and they laugh and talk about how to build a fire. There's so much more."

Scouting has formed their lives.

"Mainly, it's about building confidence in oneself," said Thomas, a business student at California State University, Sacramento. "It's learning to get through different problems. It teaches you about work ethic ... setting goals and accomplishing them, being more understanding and cooperative. "

Joseph, a fifth-generation Stocktonian who works in the insurance business founded by his great-great grandfather in 1887, has two personal items hanging on the wall by his desk. One is his degree from University of the Pacific. The other is his Eagle Scout plaque.

"I hear adults say they were close during their senior year of high school, but didn't get it done," Joseph said.

All three Dietrich brothers can relate.

They, with the support of their parents, Joe and Denise, fit scouting around hectic schedules. They all played water polo at Lincoln, were year-round swimmers and performed in the band. Richard organized a ski club, although insurance problems prevented it from ever actually hitting the slopes.

"We had pizza one day at lunch and watched snowboarding videos," he said.

Let it not be said a Boy Scout can't improvise.

To be an Eagle Scout, though, requires earning 21 merit badges and organizing and implementing a community service project, all by one's 18th birthday. Joseph finished with about a month to spare. Thomas had a week's leeway. Richard submitted his application two days before his birthday last month.

For his service project, Richard got a 100-foot fence built along a path at the San Joaquin Historical Society. He and volunteers logged 187 hours on the task.

It was, he said, time well spent. More importantly, it was only a beginning.

He'll enter Pacific in the fall, and though he doesn't know what he wants to do with the business degree he'll pursue, his future will be linked to his Boy Scout past.

"I definitely want to help people," Richard said. "I don't know how, or what, but Boys Scouts have given me (confidence) that I am an effective leader and people will listen to me. However I can help people, and have fun doing it, I will."